


change

by truethingsproved



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-11 08:18:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17443271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/truethingsproved/pseuds/truethingsproved
Summary: Before he can move, she presses forward to bring her lips to his, and she all but melts into him – he is a gift, a visionary, a miracle, and she doesn’t believe in the Maker but sometimes he makes her think she should.Inspired by the Shadow and Bone prompt, "You and I are going to change the world."





	change

The battle is quick enough – and deadly. They limp their way back to Darktown, all of them silent; Aveline takes up the rear, shooting worried looks at the apostate in front of her, while Bethany walks at her sister’s side, an arm around her to help keep her supported. Anders drags, looking ten years older than he did in the morning; his eyes look empty, and the life seems to have been drained from him.

     For her part, Kat stays silent, in part because if she speaks, she’ll scream. Bethany had helped her bandage herself in the shadow of the Chantry, hidden in an alcove behind the steps; Anders had offered to heal her then but he’d looked too tired to heal a papercut, much less what feels like broken ribs and a deep, bleeding gash in her side. It had been an injury of her own doing: she had moved between him and a Templar, caught the sword in her side, and the blade had been sharp enough to slice through the leather of her armor and into her skin.

     “Shouldn’t have been so cheap with the armorer,” she teased, but Bethany had shushed her, doing her best to bandage the injury when she refused to get  _real_  healing, and she’d be glaring at her now if not for that worried frown.

     The steps down to Lowtown are agonizing, and Kat manages it with relatively little noise. The bandages are getting soaked through with blood; she presses a hand to her side and her fingers come away crimson. Still, she’s quiet; she’s survived worse, and she’s not concerned that this will be a particularly dangerous injury, only that it will hurt, rather a lot. Her resolve to remain silent only lasts a bit longer, and she stumbles, falling from Bethany’s grasp with a sharp cry as she moves to catch herself.

     Anders is there quickly enough. He immediately kneels behind her, moving her to sit upright before having her lean against his chest. With no concern for the fact that they’re in the street, that anyone could look out a window and see them, he strips the bloodied leather from her side and presses his hands to the wound, his skin pulsing with a warm and gentle white light. She can feel the skin knitting itself under his grasp, and there’s a warm tingling spreading through her from the wound itself through her veins, down to her feet. 

     It’s just the healing. She’s sure it’s just the healing. But she doesn’t crack the joke sitting at the tip of her tongue –  _rather forward of you, dear, and if you’d wanted me stripping you could have just asked._ It’s too soon after watching his friend die (  _worse_  than die ). Even an attempt to lighten the mood is too much, too soon.

     When he’s finished, he helps her stand again, and she’s faint from the blood loss and her head is swimming but she can put one foot in front of the other, at the very least. The entrance to the undercity isn’t far, and Bethany winds an arm around her again to keep her upright. The leather chest piece is too badly damaged to repair, or even to wear, and it’s abandoned on the street – hardly the most disgusting thing to be found – and Katheryn shivers, left with only the light chemise worn beneath, sliced through and blood soaked, but better than nothing, she supposes. Her ribs are still broken, and she’s still in pain, but at least she’s not bleeding anymore.

     They don’t speak until they reach his clinic, and he gestures for her to get on the nearest empty cot. “I want to take a look at that injury,” he murmurs, “and clean it up a bit more.” She’s hitched her chemise up enough to show the injury before he’s finished speaking, and she winces as he unwinds the bandages, presses his long fingers carefully to the bruises on her skin, feels for the damage done to her.

     Bethany hisses, and Aveline takes her gently by the arm. “I’ll bring her home,” she says, and Kat offers a wave in their direction, before looking back at the man beside her.

     Anders’ touch is careful, and his examination is thorough; when he heals her this time, it’s slower,  _warmer_  somehow, and she clenches her fists at her sides without realizing it, before spreading her fingers as wide as she can, staring directly at the wall opposite her. She is acutely aware of him, his breath on her skin, and she closes her eyes briefly.

      _Not the time._  

     “Are you alright?” she asks after a moment, and he laughs, sharp and short.

     “Aren’t I supposed to ask you that? You’re the patient.”

     “It’s only a flesh wound.  _Yours_  is worse.” He jerks his hands away suddenly, and Kat frowns, reaching forward only to brush her fingers against his elbow. “It’s alright, if you don’t want to talk about it. You don’t have to. I won’t push. I just – I hope you are alright, and if there’s anything I can do – ”

     He leans into the touch, just a little, just enough for her to know that the offered comfort is welcome, before he turns and busies himself with discarding the bandages. “I knew it was a possibility,” he says finally. “But – ”

     “It’s different to know something is possible, and to see that it’s happened.”

     “Your sister’s an apostate – she has been all her life?”

     “She is. My father was, too. He died a few years ago.”

     “You mentioned a brother?”

     “Carver. Not a mage. Killed by the darkspawn, when we fled Lothering.” Her throat tightens at the mention of her brother’s name, and she hunches her shoulders. “It’s not something that stops hurting. Him, or my Da.”

     “You’re very protective of your sister.”

     “Can you blame me? Bethany was in enough danger in Lothering. I’d have killed every Templar in town to protect her and instead I had to deliver her into a city crawling with them, because we had nowhere else to go.”

     He looks her in the eye again, and his lips quirk up into a small, sad smile. “I think,” he says, “you and I will get along. I’ll give you the map before you leave tonight – if you don’t want to stay and rest. You can. I’d recommend that, actually; you shouldn’t strain yourself.”

     “I might take you up on that. Thank you. I think you’re right, you know.”

     “What could go wrong, surrounding yourself with more apostates? What’s the worst that can happen?”

     She laughs, and shrugs one shoulder. “We face off against the Templars – and Bartrand – in a battle that’s doomed from the start. There’s nothing even remotely romantic or daring about it; I die in an extremely undignified way – maybe I trip and fall right onto a sword – and they call me the Laughingstock of Lothering. Best case scenario?”

     He falls silent for a moment, before laying a hand on her shoulder. “You and I are going to change the world?”

     “Seems more likely, doesn’t it?”

     Anders laughs, and the sound is tired, but at least it’s real. “I’ll get you something clean to wear. You can sleep here tonight, and leave in the morning when you’re feeling better.”

     The tunic she wears smells of herbs and linens and something almost smoky. Katheryn falls asleep the moment her head hits the lumpy pillow on the patient cot, and is asleep as he locks the door and pauses on his way to the back of the clinic, just long enough to pull the blanket at her feet up to cover her.

* * *

 

“This is –  _good_ , love. A few adjustments and I think this might be the one.”  


     He seems surprised to hear it. She’s been poring over the latest draft of his manifesto, scribbling notes in the margins –  _have you considered this text, this might be a flawed argument, this is beautiful_  – but her notes are fewer and farther between than they’ve been on any other draft before it. Her fingers are covered in ink, black rivulets in the lines of her fingers, and there’s a smudge across her cheek, transferred after a thoughtless scratch to an unfortunate itch. Anders has already tried to get it out twice, and failed. He sits up, blankets pooling in his lap, and hooks his chin over her shoulder to read along with her.

     “You think so?”

     “I do. The argument on page six is still a little weak – I know what you’re getting at, but it needs tightening.” 

     Occasionally, she thinks she sees a flash of blue, bright and otherworldly, in his eyes, and she wonders what Justice would say.

     ( Isabela had once teased that the three of them – Anders, Katheryn, and Justice – must make an interesting set, and Kat had laughed it off. But she thinks perhaps they might, in the most mundane sense of the world. She looks at Anders and she  _loves,_ wholly, absolutely; that love doesn’t shift or fade when it’s Justice she sees looking back at her. It simply  _is_. And Anders had told her that Justice didn’t approve... but she wonders, she  _wonders,_ if perhaps that’s changing. ) 

     Anders presses a tired kiss to her bare shoulder as she sets the manifesto on her bedside table, and she can feel him smiling against her skin. “What are you thinking about?”

     “I think – ” He pauses, presses a kiss to her jaw. “ – you and I – ” His long fingers curl around her chin, turn her face towards him, and he brushes his lips across her forehead. “ – are going to – ” The tip of her nose, next, and she closes her eyes and smiles at the kiss. “ – become the worst storm these Templars have ever faced.” 

     Before he can move, she presses forward to bring her lips to his, and she all but melts into him – he is a gift, a visionary, a  _miracle_ , and she doesn’t believe in the Maker but sometimes he makes her think she should. There is an utter selflessness to what he does – a free clinic in the most dangerous corner of the city, practically inviting the Templars to his doorsteps, facing his worst fears for the betterment of the many. 

      She tangles her fingers in his hair and she smiles into his kiss. His fingers trail along the scar on her side, a remnant from their first of many adventures together; he thinks about Karl sometimes, and it breaks her heart to see him in pain. He thinks of the Starkhaven apostates, of the girl he’d nearly killed in the Gallows’ dungeons, of every mage he fears he’s failed, and if she could carry the weight for him, she would in a heartbeat. She knows that kind of guilt – she feels it when she thinks of Carver, and of Bethany.

     After a moment, he pulls back from her, one hand curled against her side, the other against the side of her neck, and he simply looks at her. Her own hand falls from his hair to curl around his wrist, and as he brushes his thumb along her jaw, her other hand comes to rest against his chest, over the steady thrum of his heart.

     “I think things are going to get much worse,” he says quietly, and she can feel the pain in his voice, “before they get better. I know you have Bethany, and me, but this doesn’t have to be your fight.”

     She shrugs one shoulder, leans forward to brush her lips across his. “I know. It’s my fight anyway. I  _want_  it to be my fight.”

     “Even if it hurts you?”

     “You keep insisting that I’m going to get hurt – I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I don’t lead a particularly safe life as is. What’s one more injury?”

     “This could kill you. I couldn’t bear that.”

     “Well, then, I suppose I just can’t get killed, can I?”

     He lets out a frustrated huff of breath, but she can see the smile tugging at his lips, and she leans forward to kiss him again, harder this time. “I am  _with_  you, love,” she promises. “From here until the end of it, whatever that end is. I am with you, and that’s not changing. I’ll storm the Gallows with you right now, if you ask. You need to know that.”

     “I do. And that’s what worries me.”

     “It worries me, too, knowing that you’re in danger. I can walk away from this –  _you can’t_. I am with you,” she repeats, “and even if I can walk away, I won’t.”

     He sighs, and he leans forward, his forehead resting against hers. “Then it looks like you and I are going to change the world,” he murmurs, and she smiles, eyes falling closed.

     “Ready whenever you are, my love.”

* * *

 

The world is ending – but they have time for this much, at least.

     She kisses him, hard, feeling the ash and dirt smeared across his face as she skims her fingers along his jaw, his cheek, his throat. When he pulls away, her eyes are hard and sure.

     “I’ll be a fugitive.”

     “I’ll come with you.”

     “You’ll give it all up – ?”

     “I told you.” Her hands fall to his robe, and she grips the fabric tightly, fingers twisting in the feathered pauldrons. “I’m not leaving you. I’m with you, wherever this takes us, wherever this ends up. I live and I die at your side, Anders. I don’t care where we go. I’m going with  _you,_ if you’ll have me.”

     “Of course I’ll have you – ”

     “You said once that mages don’t dare fall in love, that this was the rule you’d cherish breaking. Is that still true?” She pulls him as close as she can, and she doesn’t pay any mind to the curious eyes watching them, or the angry shouts coming closer and closer with every breath. “Would you do it all again?”

     “In a heartbeat. Would you?”

     She smiles, and it’s the most honest smile she’s ever worn. “Over and over, my love.”

     He kisses her, afraid it might be their last, sure that if it is he’s led a life worth living.

     After a long moment, Katheryn Hawke draws back, and she traces her fingers across every inch of his face, as if she intends to memorize the contours. “I love you. Always have.”

     “I know. I love you, too.”

     She is reluctant to release him, but she does, grabbing hold of his hand and lacing their fingers together as if in a compromise to herself. “It’s time,” she says, and somehow, she’s ready. “You and I are going to change the world.”


End file.
